By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
What if hundreds of small enemy micro-drone explosives descend upon an Army mechanized formation to overwhelm vehicle-mounted guns or other kinetic, on-the-move countermeasures, while an offensive armored convoy operation moves to “close with an enemy?”
Considering these kinds of contingencies, it would be difficult to underestimate the emphasis the Pentagon is now placing upon Counter-UAS given the scope and nature of the fast-evolving threat. Commercial and government entities such as Army Futures Command’s Army Applications Laboratory are fast expanding the operational sphere of C-UAS to include AI-enabled detection and discernment systems and new non-kinetic applications, yet staying in front of the threat is quite difficult given the pace at which weapons and drone applications are evolving.
“If you take a look at the recent wars between Russia and Ukraine and in the Middle East, you’re seeing a rise of autonomous systems. You’re seeing a rise of things in the cyber domain. And you’re seeing a rise of what I would call low cost lethality, low cost weapons systems,” Dr. Casey Perley, Director, Army Applications Laboratory, Army Futures Command, told Warrior in an interview.
The AAL, a sub-division of Army Futures Command, works with universities and large and small private and government innovators to identify and “harness,” “identify” and “actualize” promising emerging technologies. C-UAS, AI-applications and computing at the edge are naturally large points of focus of these efforts.
On-The-Move Defense
While fixed location and Forward Operating Base drone defense has been evolving for many years and made great progress, there continue to be numerous innovations re-shaping the speed and efficacy with which drone defenses can achieve successes. “On-the-Move” C-UAS protections, Perley explained, continue to be a large area of challenge and focus.
“One of the things I will say is that counter UAS is incredibly important, not just for base protection when you’re thinking of a forward operating base, but also things on the move, units on the move, forward area refueling points for helicopters, as well as domestic protection of our bases and critical infrastructure. So it’s really exciting to see all of the different ways commercial industry is getting after counter UAS in all of the different use cases the Army has. I think this is a case where there will be multiple potential solutions,” Perley explained.
On the move C-UAS defense requires advanced levels of radar detection, sensing, discrimination, fire-control and fast-moving threat validation. One of the largest areas of challenge, Perley explained, is miniaturizing advanced drone defenses combining sensors, interceptors, computing and non-kinetic effectors into a small enough “form factor” or size to be expeditionary and mobile.
“Form factors are also a really interesting thing I’m seeing. Obviously, there are exquisite systems for base protection that are much larger, take a much larger power draw. But then watching companies explore how do they miniaturize that to fit on a vehicle or fit on a small robot that might be able to throw protection over multiple vehicles,” Perley said.
AI-Enabled Systems
One of the largest and fastest moving areas of progress pertains to the integration of AI-empowered systems capable of organizing incoming sensor data from otherwise disparate streams of sensor input, bouncing integrated data off of a vast database and performing analysis and discernment necessary to identify optimal countermeasures and defensive possibilities in milliseconds. There is much promise with these applications, and much of the cutting edge work associated with this is taking place through what Perley describes as “computing at the edge.”
She is working with Army Futures Command Gen. James Rainey and other elements of the Army to further identify and cultivate technologies enabling “on-the-move” computing at the edge wherein small-form-factor sensors and processors operate at the tip of the spear while on- the-move to perform time-sensitive analysis at the “point of collection.” This massively expedites a sensor-to-shooter curve and can help optimize countermeasure integration.
Perhaps an operational environment is filled with fog, smoke or snow such that a laser countermeasure would not work? Perhaps an area is heavily populated, requiring a non-kinetic solution to prevent explosive fragmentation from inflicting collateral damage? Or, for example, as part of this … high-speed computer applications, when paired with high-fidelity sensors, can likely quickly determine if a threat is manned or unmanned and, based on its database and catalogue of historical circumstances, identify an optimal defensive method for human decision-makers.
“One of the things more broadly that I’m kind of seeing in the counter UAS space is as we think of expeditionary capabilities, one way these systems can learn of an incoming threat is by having an unmanned aerial system with ISR assets that can detect things further out.
How does it do that target recognition on board the UAS platform? How does it send that information back to the mother system or whatever you want to call it that has the defeat capability in ways that don’t take up a lot of bandwidth, are therefore hard to detect and don’t require a lot of power to send?” Perley said.
Electronic warfare, high-powered microwave, lasers and other cutting edge kinds of kinetic and non-kinetic countermeasures or effectors could potentially be well suited to “jam” or disable a large volume of incoming threats at one time.
This is why, Perley explained, the most effective approach is to merge high-speed, AI-enabled computing with human cognition and decision-making to incorporate the best of each. There are some phenomena, such as more subjective nuances fundamental to human consciousness, perception and cognition, that mathematically-generated algorithms may be at a loss to replicate, AI-empowered systems can perform many procedural and analytical functions in milliseconds, exponentially faster than humans in a way that can save lives should soldiers be under attack.
“I don’t want to see a world where we lose that expertise in favor solely of what we have trained a machine to do in set scenarios. So I love worlds where they can make machines do what they can do to reduce risk from humans and humans do what they are best at because they are now freed up from the tasks that the machines are able to do for us. So I see a world both commercially right like at home,” Perley said.
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University
